DFT Investigation of Porphyrin Aggregates

Abstract

Owing the attractive potential applications of porphyrin assemblies in photocatalysis, sensors and material science, nowadays studies concerning porphyrin aggregation are largely diffused. These chromophores can organize in elaborated architectures by an assorted set of non-covalent interactions (i.e. π–π stacking, H-bonding, metal coordination, hydrophobic effect, and electrostatic forces) between the tetrapyrrolic macrocycles, mostly in J-or H-aggregated species, where the aromatic platforms are stacked side by side and face to face, respectively. UV-vis spectroscopy allows the identification of the porphyrin arrangement within the aggregates, through the modified spectral features of the porphyrin monomer following the interaction among the porphyrin units. Despite plenty of experimental investigations dealing with the self-organization of porphyrin both in solution and at the solid state, computational studies are still limited.In this communication, a computational examination of the different porphyrin aggregation approaches will be presented, taking into account the amphiphilic [5-{4-(3-trimethylammonium)propyloxyphenyl}-10,15,20-triphenylporphyrin] chloride, whose aggregation behavior has been previously experimentally investigated. In particular, the definition of appropriate functionals to study and characterize porphyrin aggregates, to get more insights on the kind of the interactions responsible for the formation of the specific noncovalent systems (J-, H-, T- or cation-π aggregates) experimentally observed will be proposed.Fig. Calculated structures of J-type (left) and cation-π (right) dimers of [5-{4-(3-trimethylammonium)propyloxyphenyl}-10,15,20-triphenylporphyrin] chloride. Figure 1